Kenny Easley made an instant impact

Friday

Aug 4, 2017 at 8:39 PMAug 4, 2017 at 8:40 PM

Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinees Notebook: Even in epic defeats as a Zip, Jason Taylor did his job to get noticed by NFL coaches; Morten Andersen remembers well Dwayne Rudd's helmet toss; Tackling the 'Tyler Rose'

CANTON Former Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Steve Largent said Kenny Easley wasted no time in making a good impression after being drafted with the No. 4 overall pick in 1981.

Easley came to a players-only practice, which featured then-quarterback Jim Zorn throwing to Largent, who had made the Pro Bowl in 1978 and 1979 on his way into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

“Kenny said, ‘Hey, I want to play some cornerback,’” Largent recalled. “We knew we’d drafted him as a safety, but he got out there and I fought to get 50-50 parity with him. I said, ‘This guy’s special.’ That was my first impression of Kenny Easley and he went on to exceed all of everyone’s expectations.”

Largent considers Easley one of the best athletes to ever play in the NFL.

“When he was in his prime, he could play with anybody anytime anywhere, and he knew that,” Largent said. “He was just a physical presence on the field and also a leader in the locker room and in the huddle. He really inspired our entire team. Our defense played better than it looked on paper when Kenny was on the field and, to me, that’s the mark of a Hall of Famer — someone who not only plays at a high level but elevates the play of the guys around him.”

Don’t mess with him

Easley was a bad man on the football field. And even at the age of 58 and having undergone a kidney transplant and open heart surgery in his post-playing life, he still has an intense presence about him.

Asked which of his running back classmates — LaDainian Tomlinson or Terrell Davis — would have been tougher to bring down, Easley said, “I’m glad I didn’t play against either one of them because I’d have hurt both of them.”

He smiled, but one gets the sense it wasn’t that much of a joke to him.

Even though he didn’t come into the league until eight years after Easley retired, Davis knows Easley was no joke.

“I went back and watched some of Kenny’s highlights,” Davis said. “It’s real. The man, he’s a hitter.”

Thanks, but no thanks

Hall of Fame defensive end Jason Taylor works as an assistant coach at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where one of his sons will be a freshman this year.

He's not looking to move up a few levels.

“They (NFL coaches) all get old and fat,” he said, laughing. “I respect the hell out of what they do, but I don’t want to do it myself.

“I’m just going to coach my kids for the next four or five years until I get fired.”

Taylor said he is enjoying coaching through a raspy voice that he attributed to yelling at practice.

“I’m missing two days of training camp, so I’m sure the kids will have me doing up-downs when I get back," he said. "I’ll probably wear my gold jacket to practice on Monday when I get back.”

The waterworks

Asked about the likelihood of him crying during Saturday’s enshrinement, Taylor scoffed.

“Man, I cried last night giving a toast at dinner,” he said. “I ain’t got no chance.

“Larry Little did say, ‘You can’t cry. Don’t be a sissy.’ He said how he didn’t cry and laughed his whole way through it, that guys are going to make fun of me if I cry. … I was like, ‘Larry, listen, it’s going to happen, so you might as well start now.’”

Pass happy

The game has changed when it comes to running backs, so says LaDainian Tomlinson.

“We’re throwing the ball a lot more today than when I played,” he said. “So I don’t think running backs have the same opportunities to get the yards and the touchdowns, to build a Hall of Fame career. But you definitely see guys with the talent that may one day be in the Hall of Fame.”

Tomlinson mentioned Frank Gore and Adrian Peterson as two current running backs who likely will be in Canton when they’re done with their careers. He also believes Marshawn Lynch has a chance if the player known as “Beast Mode” finishes his career strong.

Free bird

Easley spent his NFL career as a strong safety with the Seattle Seahawks. Although he reached the Hall of Fame playing that position, he believes he could have been even better as a free safety.

"If I had my druthers, I'd have played free safety," Easley said. "That's what I played all my life. They put me at strong safety because they saw me as a pass defending run stopper. I was 6-foot-3, 210 pounds. I think they looked at our first scrimmages and said 'Yeah, we have him in the right position. This guy is going to get us 10-13 tackles a game.' I think if I had played free safety though I would have had 49 or 50 interceptions instead of the 32 I ended up with."

Respect us

Easley is just the eighth player to be enshrined exclusively as a safety (although players such as Ronnie Lott, Mel Renfro and Ron Woodson were inducted as both cornerbacks and safeties). He believes that number is ridiculous.

“Come on, man,” Easley said. “We set the TONE on defense.”

Easley rattled off safeties such as John Lynch, Steve Atwater, Darren Woodson and Brian Dawkins whom he’d like to see inducted in the future. He also pointed out that no-doubters Troy Polamalu and Ed Reed will be eligible for Canton soon. Polamalu retired in 2014, Reed in 2013.

Aloha to the Pro Bowl?

Easley believes the NFL has to be careful in how it alters the game in regards to player safety. Basically, he doesn’t want football to lose its integrity.

But one decision should be easy, according to him.

“They can take the Pro Bowl and get rid of that because that’s not indicative of pro football. It’s a sham,” he said.

“… I wrote Roger Goodell about six years ago telling him what they’re doing out there with the Pro Bowl does not resemble the Pro Bowl I used to be in. We played a football game. Now we had a gentleman’s agreement that we weren’t going to play what we called ‘balls out’ — excuse my language — but we were going to tackle each other and make it look like a football game. But what they do now, that’s even below flag football.”

Bo knows

Easley and the Seahawks had a fierce rivalry with the Oakland Raiders in the early 80s. It was a rivalry that only got more intense when college stars such as Brian Bosworth and Bo Jackson were added to the mix later in the decade.

"There was a lot of tension in it," Easley said. "They didn't like us and we didn't like them. For a lot of reasons. When Brian Bosworth got to Seattle, he started to intensify the rivalry. He would run his mouth to Bo Jackson or Marcus Allen. Bo Jackson did a good job of shutting him up. That ended that."

Tackling 'Tyler Rose' a thorny issue

Easley is regarded as one of the hardest-hitting safeties of all time. Even he was scared to take down one guy.

"Earl Campbell was the most frightening thing I ever seen in my life," Easley said. "When you played Houston you had to get yourself in a certain mindset, because you had to deal with Campbell."

Asked how to tackle the 'Tyler Rose,' Easley said, "Did you see those thigh pads he had on? You got him around the top of his body and tried to wrestle him down, with three other people.

"You didn't tackle him by yourself. You tackled him with a gang of people. We used to practice it. One guy grabbed him to slow him down, then other guys pulled him down. It was like wrestling a Texas steer."

Hairy moment for Morten

Morten Andersen was well known for some flowing, golden locks back in the 1980s. Saturday, they will be bronze when his bust is unveiled.

"I haven't seen it," he said. "I saw it in Utah red clay. It was more like a mid-career mullet. I don't think it was a Tennessee waterfall. We'll see how it looks in bronze."

Zips get noticed, too

Taylor, the first Akron Zip enshrined in the Hall, said it's not what college you play for, it's how you play for it if you'd like to get to the next level. And maybe, the Hall of Fame.

"It's a little more difficult to be seen, but there are more media outlets now," Taylor said. "You have more exposure. If you stick to the grind, play the game, make plays no matter what the level of play is ... and just keep doing that, (scouts) will find you.

"They found me after we lost to Virginia Tech by 70 points. We went to Kansas State and we got beat I think 62-0. Go make plays. Don't let the outcome determine your level of effort. Maybe some crazy coach like Jimmy Johnson will draft you and give you a shot. And you'll end up here."

Champs were here

The top moment of Tomlinson’s career came at the expense of the Cleveland Browns. Tomlinson’s Chargers blanked the Browns in Cleveland 21-0, which clinched the first division title of Tomlinson’s career.

“You have to imagine, my first two or three years, we weren’t very good. The year before I got to the Chargers, they had won one game. It was a franchise, without question, at the bottom of the barrel at that time. … No one thought we would do anything. And so in three years, becoming a division champion, going to the playoffs, I remember that celebration in the locker room with the hats and shirts and the hugs. It was an amazing feeling.”

Tomlinson ran for 111 yards and two touchdowns in the win against Cleveland. San Diego finished the season at 12-4.

Mom missed out

Tomlinson is extremely close with his mother, Loreane Chappell, who basically raised him on her own. According to Tomlinson, she attended every one of his games from Pop Warner through college except one.

“The only game she missed was my 406-yard game, and that’s because she was at my brother’s game,” he said, referring to his NCAA-record day for TCU in 1999. Tomlinson’s single-game rushing mark stood for 15 years.

Thrill of Victory

The "wildest game" Andersen was a part of is also one of most painful moments in the history of the expansion era of the Cleveland Browns. Andersen and the Kansas City Chiefs were the beneficiary of Dwayne Rudd's infamous helmet throw in 2002 that helped the Chiefs to a 40-39 win with no time on the clock.

"Rudd is going for a sack on Trent Green," Andersen said. "Trent throws an underhand pass to eligible offensive tackle John Tait. He starts running down the sidelines with no time on the clock. Rudd throws his helmet and gets an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. It's 15 yards. ... They finally catch John and get him down, but we get 15 yards after that. I have a 35-yarder from the left hash to win the game with 0:00 on the clock. This is my first game as a Chief, mind you. I made it. We go home with the win. It was the craziest thing I was ever part of."

Agony of Defeat

Andersen has had plenty of great moments. There have been some bad ones as well. There was perhaps no more humbling moment for Andersen than the 1996 regular season finale with the Atlanta Falcons against the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Falcons trailed 19-17 with eight seconds left, but put Andersen in position for a 30-yard field goal.

"It was a bad field," Andersen said. "Bad grass, bad conditions. I'm not making excuses. I have a 30-yarder from the middle. A chip shot. We make this, we win. Jacksonville is out of the playoffs. ... I line up. As I plant my foot, it slides about two feet forward. I push the ball left. We lose the game. Jacksonville goes to the playoffs. I'm laying on my (butt) and I'm looking up and Robbie Tobeck, an offensive guard for us, comes over and straddles me. I think, 'What a nice guy. He's going to help me up.' Instead he yells, 'You lost the game!' and steps over me and goes to the locker room and leaves me laying there."

No lie, exclusion hurts

Terrell Davis was in Canton for Shannon Sharpe's 2011 induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was hopeful then of getting the call from the Hall of Fame.

Davis was asked about the six-year wait between Sharpe's induction and his.

"It's tough. Every year you get asked the question," he said. "You say 'Well, if it doesn't happen I'm fine, life goes on, it doesn't change how I feel.' It's a lie. It's a lie."

Viva Las Vegas

Seeing a franchise leave town is never easy. Easley believes the Raiders may ultimately end up in a better place once they reach Las Vegas.

"I think this is probably going to be a good move for them," Easley said. "Golden State has pretty much sucked all the air out of the bay area, in terms of sports, with the way they are playing basketball right now. The Raiders are just getting good again. This is a perfect opportunity for them to find a new spot to play and maybe become the championship team they were in the past."